{"id":16,"date":"2002-07-05T18:33:17","date_gmt":"2002-07-06T02:33:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/archives\/2002\/07\/05\/how-missions-is-a-partnership\/"},"modified":"2010-11-14T09:22:32","modified_gmt":"2010-11-14T17:22:32","slug":"how-missions-is-a-partnership","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2002\/07\/05\/how-missions-is-a-partnership","title":{"rendered":"How Missions Is A Partnership"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I sometimes conceptualize missions as a stool supported by three legs: <b>proclaimers<\/b>, <b>providers<\/b>, and <b>pray-ers<\/b> (or for a completely different set of labels we could use <b>intercession<\/b>, <b>investment<\/b>, and <b>involvement<\/b>). Without any one of these legs, missions simply cannot be sustained.<\/p>\n<p>Which leads into my point\u2026 you may have noticed that we prefer the term \u2018partner\u2019 to \u2018donor\u2019 in our conversations and in our writing. This preference emerged from a study of <a href=\"http:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2002\/07\/05\/the-biblical-model-for-funding-missionary-work\">how ministry was funded in the Bible<\/a>. A crystal-clear conviction emerged: <b>God considers those who contribute financially to ministry to have a share in that ministry!<\/b> Consider, for example, <a href=\"http:\/\/bible.gospelcom.net\/cgi-bin\/bible?passage=3JOHN%2B1%3A8&amp;showfn=on&amp;showxref=on&amp;language=english&amp;version=NLT&amp;x=16&amp;y=7\">3 John 8<\/a>: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Therefore we ought to support such people, so that we may become co-workers with the&nbsp;truth.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Echoing the same theme, Paul says the Philippians are <i>sharing in the gospel<\/i> (<a href=\"http:\/\/bible.gospelcom.net\/cgi-bin\/bible?language=english&amp;version=NIV&amp;passage=Phil+1%3A5\">Philippians 1.5<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>This is why we talk about building a support team rather than raising funds. The emphasis is on the relationships and not on the&nbsp;money.<\/p>\n<p>Even more significantly, however, it forces us to remember that those who decide to aid us financially are, in actuality, joining us in our ministry: they become co-workers with&nbsp;us.<\/p>\n<p> How so? Think of it this way: your money is a representation of your life: it is what you get in exchange for time at work. By giving of that, it is as though you were taking time and serving on the mission field!&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s kind of amazing when you think about it. We all have a part to play in the Kingdom of God. Some of us work in office buildings, some of us work in homes, and some of us work in churches, but we all work together. All are necessary for God\u2019s work to go forward.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Why we are convinced the term \u2018partners\u2019 is more Biblical (and healthy) than \u2018donors\u2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2-investment-giving"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Ded-g","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2854,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions\/2854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}